SAP's shares slid 4.5% on the news, in part because Oracle recently reported a 17% jump in quarterly software revenue.

"Especially after their main competitor Oracle managed to beat estimates last month, many had hoped that SAP would follow suit," equity analyst Markus Huber of ETX Capital told Reuters.

SAP's shortfall could be pinned on the Americas region, where software revenue grew just 3%, versus 8% in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, and 23% in the Asia-Pacific and Japan region. SAP has suffered management turnover in North America, where Geraldine McBride recently resigned after serving for less than a year as president of the region. What's more, McBride's predecessor, Robert Courteau, left the company in 2012 after 15 months in the job.

Commenting on the most recent departure on January 8, SAP said in a statement that McBride resigned for personal reasons and that the move was unrelated to performance. The entire Americas region will now be led by Rodolpho Cardenuto, who previously oversaw the Latin America and Caribbean regions.

Despite the tepid fourth-quarter results, SAP racked up a strong year overall with a 13% increase in SSRS revenue, more than 16 billion Euros ($21 billion) in total revenue, triple-digit growth in Hana in-memory database revenue to 390 million Euros ($520 million), and cloud-services growth that has put cloud revenue on a 850 million Euro ($1.13 billion) annual run rate.

"We achieved a breakthrough in the cloud, and today SAP is the second-largest cloud player in the world," SAP said in a statement attributed to co-CEOs Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe. "We [also] overachieved on our SAP Hana revenue ambition, making SAP the fastest-growing next-generation database company in the market."

SAP will release its complete 2012 results along with 2013 guidance on January 23.

Until noon December 31, there was no sign of a bargain to avoid major fiscal tightening in 2013. Could this be an explanation for SAP's Q4 performance in the US?This should then also apply to IBM, Informatica, and others. In November, there was still a certain degree of optimism.

There are signs of disagreements inside SAP both on cloud and on Hana. On cloud, Nomura said today that "We believe there may be some conflict internally over the appropriate level of investment in the newly acquired SaaS businesses." On Hana, Plattner and Sikka talked up Hana and dramatic transformation, but one day later other executives acknowledged that conventional database would live on and they highlighted the free inclusion of the Sybase ASE database with SAP BusinessSuite-on-Hana deals. Debate is good. I'd come down in favor of more cloud investment. In fact, that would be a great place to expedite innovation with Hana!

Software as a service is the clear No. 1 way enterprises consume cloud. InformationWeek's SaaS Innovation Survey reveals three tips to get the most from SaaS: Make it a popularity contest. Have an escape plan. And remember that identity is the new perimeter.